In 2015, 39 ingots believed to be orichalcum were discovered in a sunken vessel on the coasts of Gela in Sicily which have tentatively been dated at 2,600 years old. Needham also suggests that the Greeks may not have known how orichalcum was made, and that they might even have had an imitation of the original. Joseph Needham notes that Bishop Richard Watson, an eighteenth-century professor of chemistry, wrote of an ancient idea that there were "two sorts of brass or orichalcum". However, these usages are difficult to reconcile with the claims of Plato's Critias, who states that the metal was "only a name" by his time, while brass and chalcopyrite were very important in the time of Plato, as they still are today. In later years, "orichalcum" was used to describe the sulfide mineral chalcopyrite and also to describe brass. Orichalcum has been held to be either a gold– copper alloy, a copper– tin or copper– zinc brass, or a metal or metallic alloy no longer known. In Virgil's Aeneid, the breastplate of Turnus is described as "stiff with gold and white orichalc". It is known from the writings of Cicero that the metal which they called orichalcum resembled gold in color but had a much lower value. The Romans transliterated "orichalcum" as "aurichalcum", which was thought to literally mean "gold copper".
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